The invention relates generally to interface devices for connecting peripheral medical devices to patient monitors for transmitting data about a patient from the peripheral device to the monitor via the interface, and more particularly to a device and method for providing simultaneous data from peripheral medical devices to multiple patient monitors for bedside device data aggregation.
In current practice, various interface devices, such as UnityID, Vuelink, IDM-MG3000 and similar devices, are utilized to connected peripheral patient devices with patient monitors to enable patient data obtained by the peripheral devices to be displayed on the monitors. These interface devices are configured as multiport interface devices which can simultaneously receive physiological data from peripheral devices that are connected directly to a patient, such as ventilators, IV pumps, CCO devices, and the like, and provide and/or direct the data either to the patient monitor or to the respective monitoring network connected to the interface device. With these types of interface devices, up to eight peripheral devices can be connected to a single interface device for simultaneously receiving data from the peripheral devices and forwarding the data to a single patient monitor also connected to the interface device. To accomplish this, these multiport interface devices contain customized drivers for the proper operation of the interface device in forwarding the data received from the peripheral devices to the connected patient monitor in order to avoid data mixing within the interface device.
In many of the care areas in a hospital where these interface devices are utilized, less than eight (8) peripheral devices will be used for a single patient, because many patient monitors include certain parameter module(s) within the monitor itself. As a result, often, only 2-3 ports of the interface device are utilized for a patient, with 5-6 ports of the interface device being vacant or not used.
From the standpoint of a customer or end user of these interface devices, this presents an issue, i.e., connecting a single patient to a single interface device for data integration, as a large number of multiple port interface devices need to be purchased by the customer to enable the connection of the multiple peripheral devices for each patient to the interface device and associated patient monitor. These multiple port devices for a single purpose/patient become an asset to the hospital, and these assets needs to be tracked and maintained.
In addition, when using these multiport interface devices, the vacant ports on the multiport interface device can often be connected to peripheral devices that provide data coming from a different patient. In these situations, the clinical information systems recording the data received by and forwarded from the multiport interface device can potentially have mixed patient data from different patients that is recorded as a single patient record, thus creating a number of safety and treatment related issues.
From the perspective of the interface device manufacturer, all of the devices that are manufactured, e.g., single port, dual port, and multiport devices have to be maintained and able to be utilized with the various peripheral devices that can be connected to the interface device, many of which have different and unique operating drivers. The consequent development cost and maintenance costs to provide interface devices to accommodate this situation are high for these interface devices as a result.
One example of an interface device that attempts to address this issue is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,621,489, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. In the '489 patent, the interface device includes a device supervisor component that is capable of reconfiguring the framework components of the interface device in order to accommodate/enable the interface device to communicate with the particular driver(s) for the peripheral devices connected to the interface device. This is accomplished by the supervisor component generating a reusable plug-and-play extensible markup language driver file that can be selected by the user when a peripheral device employing that driver and which is used by the supervisor component to configure the interface device to accommodate the driver for the particular peripheral device.
However, in utilizing an interface device of this type, the complexity of the interface device required to include the supervisor component and the associated driver files renders the interface device difficult to implement in many situations. Further, the interface device in the '489 patent does not address the issue of peripheral devices from multiple patients being improperly connected to the same interface device, and the consequent data mixing issues.
As a result, an improved multiport interface device is needed to enable the device to be utilized more efficiently while also reduce the potential or likelihood serious errors that can cause mixing of patient data records when connecting multiple peripheral devices to the multiport interface device.